English
In Praise of Ali, Commander of the Faithful (2)
Once more my tongue is full of complaint;
again my heart is full of both worlds.
There was a time I had a heart but no voice;
now every strand of my hair is brimming with speech.
Since that hidden Friend made a home in me,
my house has filled with the enemy of my soul.
What good is it if I gain both worlds,
when my heart and soul are filled only with loss?
Since the Friend has neither place nor being,
who is it that fills all space and existence with His presence?
Yesterday and today are empty vessels;
so what is it that fills the cup of time?
If past and future are themselves untouched,
then with what is the goblet's single sip filled?
Why all these circles within circles,
when the heart at the center is filled from within?
The sea is emptier than a single drop,
though it stretches full from shore to shore.
My body stayed an empty purse without spirit,
until it was filled with that living spirit.
The earth's turmoil rose again to the heavens;
my house was emptied of the one who dwelled within.
Not a single hair of me is without awareness, without breath;
what can I say, when you have no ear to hear?
I embraced the gift of your nearness, yet
the one I held was not truly within my arms.
Day by day my burden only grows;
tonight is no less heavy than last night.
Though you are free of any stain,
you do not forget me, stained as I am.
Though I have no tongue to speak your name,
not one hair of me is silent about you.
My heart is dead, so mourning is its due;
my ill fortune does not wear black in vain.
For all my endless gloom,
there is not an atom of me without inner fire.
I have shaken off the whole skirt of worldly means;
a home is only a burden when it is not carried lightly.
Since my heart never bowed to the sky's airs,
my pot has no need of a lid.
If kindness is absent, even his cruelty is sweet;
for me the sting is no less than the honey.
Why does the wheel of fate bend its bow against me in spite?
This longing is beyond the strength of its arm.
Alas, my words have overflowed once more,
this notebook with the heart of the sea but little room.
May my hand never grasp at longing's hem;
may my pain never be soiled by a cure.
What leaves even the turning heavens helpless
is the trouble of love, may it never come easy.
May no heart, gathered and whole like mine,
be scattered in the curls of your hair.
I am sunlight cast into disarray;
let no shadow of order fall upon my head.
The world lies ruined by the heavens' so-called repair;
let no complaint be left to the guardian's planning.
The window of the sun has filled with smoke;
may a single mote never wish to roam free.
The sky is in pawn to Noah's ark;
may my weeping eyes not bring on the flood.
There is no time to beat my head in grief; may no bad habit make me tear my collar.
How long must envy's thorn prick at my eye! Let no mirror hold a garden in its lap.
The wheel of fate strikes only those already broken; let no ball be the right size for the polo stick.
The memory of my own faithfulness is killing me; may no one ever regret a good deed.
Your kindness has cast me into regret; it was a father's love that threw Joseph to the wolf.
When I pour out the grief of being apart from you, I weep on one side and moan on the other.
Every breath of lament I loose comes tangled, dragging a knot of weeping behind it.
The flower is a kiss pressed to the dust of a doorway; that is the only smile I aim at the water of life.
If they led me from his door to paradise, I would go, but keep my face turned back.
You left, and what haven't I done in your absence! If only you would come, see what I would do.
I draw such a sigh from remembering your stature that I tear the cypress's robe wide open.
When I speak with you of being one, I am splitting myself away from myself.
At last I will carry my love for you to the grave, and keep an ancient promise.
I water my own tomb with my tears, and turn it into a garden bed of love.
I am not one to quarrel with anyone; this is only the ache of my heart speaking out.
Whoever greets me with insults, I will bless and pray for him forever.
I have died, yet my heart is drowned in comfort; what is this heaviness, this stubborn heaviness of soul?
Again my heart grew proud from your kindness; the closer it came, the farther the road stretched.
My heart settled, consoled by union with you; a pity for the ruin that was rebuilt.
Tiny as a speck of dust, I breathed of love for your face, and every breath became companion to an angel.
They held my mirror up to my breath, and the mirror's east filled with light.
Your absence has sickened me even of union; my morsel turned bitter for want of salt.
How could my heart not speak the name of death, when the stream in its garden has reached the lip of the grave?
See what this meadow's grass endures: it was the dregs at the bottom of the jar, and grew into the vine.
The emperor's head became a bowl of China clay, and a bowl of China clay became an emperor's head.
My reason fell wandering into the desert; the path of losing myself led far away.
I am no sword wound, no mere injury; my own blood has become my healing balm.
From eternity past to eternity to come is a single breath for me; the wide age has shrunk to the breath of an ant.
My single drop calls out to the sea; my one wave rises up to the Pleiades.
I struck a blow against the honor of caution; I turned to glass and threw myself at a wall of granite.
What do I have to do with rules of etiquette? The road was long, so I cut straight across its width.
Owing a debt of gratitude to the ship brought its own burden of grief, so I threw my baggage into the sea and went on alone.
No swift wave ever struck the sea with the force my chest struck against this heart of stone.
My boldness had spurred its horse ahead, but I reined back its head from its hot pursuit.
You cannot play polo with such a stroke as the careless blow I dealt to this world.
Many a proud head it buried in the dust, that royal crown I trampled underfoot.
My mind reaches the height of detachment's intoxication; I drank a draught from the cup of the Messiah.
Carrying the banner of lament through this dark night, I struck out as the caravan of the desert of longing.
No one answered me out of fear, when I knocked at the door of clamor and uproar.
I closed my eyes before the beloved and beat the drum of 'to whom belongs the kingdom?' for the spectacle.
Whoever grows drunk and distraught like me will shut his eyes and fall into wonder.
No one has any news of the beloved; this much news is enough for me: that there is no news.
From all the awareness the world neglects, sleep is forbidden to one who is not awake.
Not one soul has come out of the pilgrim's garb; perhaps at the door of this Kaaba there is no admission.
The permission to behold the beloved's face exists, but the strength to bear the sight does not.
I am a child reciting the lesson of forgetting; my lesson needs no repetition.
Alas, in all my idleness in this world I lack even the wings of a captive bird.
Beware, do not mock my idleness, for there is no work as great as my idleness.
My helplessness and my defiance are a torment; no one needlessly sets out to harm me.
I soar with my own lightness of spirit; let me unfurl my wings, since there is nothing else to do.
No one could trace my path; my mischief is no light prank of the turban.
The Messiah-breathed physicians get me for free, if my grief has no wish to declare itself.
If the physician had no stake in the market of sorrow, he would have no business with me and my idleness.
Love of the idols made its home in my heart; then another flood turned toward the ruin.
All my patience has gone to wind and sighing; heartache has plundered this house.
The hand of the sun was burning dark last night; did it perhaps comb your tresses?
Thanks to that trembling shudder, with the press of your feet you scattered the harvest of my hope into single grains.
Your image charged against my branded heart, as a chief of the camp inspects the dark tent.
I am branded by my own endurance, for once again your blade was notched by the wound it dealt me.
Nothing can settle my heart at all; ah, whose memory drove me mad?
Longing for you melted my mind so completely
that it turned the cup of my skull into wine and goblet.
My enemy could not break me apart;
plundering me only revealed the beloved's splendor.
The brand of longing for you in my chest
made my breast the envy of a house of angels.
Through long years, the pain of you in my body
turned every single hair into a separate giving of thanks.
Hope of you boiled up in my chest,
and my mirror became the stage for your reflection.
We are neither of the sea nor of the mine;
we are wider than all space and place.
We are not children of the heavens or the elements;
we are the essence of soul and spirit.
We are not what the sieve of the stars poured out;
we are the sifted substance of the soul.
We are the root of the world, and the world is our branch,
though we are a world apart of our own.
Anyone who is neither of the outer nor the inner realm
will know well from which mine we come.
We are not the self-adorning crowd of pretenders to knowledge;
we are the tribe that claims to know nothing.
Our show of being a sheikh is a hidden playfulness;
we look like elders, but we are young.
We do not know what the minstrel's song is;
we are devoted to sighing and lament.
We are sweet of word and delicate of meaning;
we are the treasure of the heart and the coin of the tongue.
All that we have sung is bluster and boast;
we are neither this nor that.
We are not only this, not even this;
to speak truly, we are simply that.
Though we are needful to every elder and youth,
we are worth nothing; we are mere air and water.
When our breath rouses a tumult through lament,
we cast an uproar into the song of the trumpet of doom.
As long as one can give up his life in longing for you,
we toss aside the endless life of Khidr.
We carry the Moses of the heart toward yearning,
and cast an earthquake into the breast of Mount Sinai.
The vast rank of a Kay and the kingdom of the ancient kings,
we fling into the eye of an ant.
When we set out, raising our clamor toward the fold,
we topple the living dead from grave to grave.
When we close our tear-wet, world-seeing eyes,
we cast the splendor of the flood into the oven.
When we describe your beauty in paradise,
we send an uproar through the ranks of the houris.
From the effect of a single drunken cry,
we cast a commotion into the realm of the mind.
And from the heart's throbbing in longing for union,
we bring the palace of heaven crashing into ruin.
A breach opens in the roof of the sky out of fear
when we scatter the dust of decay through the world.
Without you, the rose becomes a thorn in my eye
when I so much as mention passing through the meadow.
May the fire of love be chilled by my breath;
may the torch of the moon be put out by my sigh.
I am Joseph, and this rank of mine is my well;
the wolf's den lies at the mouth of my well.
Wherever I travel without you,
no one walks beside me but you.
Who, besides my knowing heart,
stays beside himself at the thought of you?
Thanks to their faithfulness, my lament and my dawn sighs
never break away from me.
If you make me wait forever,
let this short road grow long for me.
By the grace of my lightness, like a bubble
I have pitched my tent upon the sea.
It is no fault of mine that I fell;
it was fated for me on this road.
If I do not beg my praise from you,
then what shall I do, from whom can I get a king?
If you cast your shade over me forever,
the sun draws its substance from my threshold.
It is from the honor of the dust of your door that Khidr
draws the water of life out of my well.
The heavens delight in crushing the helpless like me,
unaware of the one who would avenge my blood.
When the King of Sainthood lends his aid,
I could pour out all of time, from eternity past to eternity to come.
When I take help from the King of Sainthood,
I can reduce both worlds to a mere tale.
When his honor shines forth in my words,
I gain a hundred honors from the grace of the telling.
The barrier of eternity becomes a stone in my path
if I try to walk the road of his love to its end.
Both worlds would dissolve into pure plainness
if I so much as hinted at your name.
From the moisture of his nature I take one drop into the world,
enough to suffice me to all eternity.
What can I say? From the ocean of his open hand
how far might I carry the grace of his generosity?
A king from whose door, until the Day of Judgment,
whatever I carry away, I carry away as pure favor.
From the revealed scriptures, in union with him,
I take chapter and verse to all eternity.
A single speck of love for his face is enough
if I carry it to the West for guidance.
I would not trade the dust of his door even if, suppose,
I could win province after province of the whole age.
O heavens, do you not fear your tyranny,
that I will bring my complaint of you to the King's door?
He through whom the foliage of unbelief was shed,
the life of God's faith, the death of unbelief.
When your praise displays its splendor,
it turns the page of moonlight into linen.
The delight of praising you so stirs the heart
that the wave of breath begins to throb.
When love for you brands its mark upon the heart,
every hair becomes a field of tulips.
If the joy of your road did not stir such ecstasy,
why would the sand whirl in flowing dance?
When the heart gazes upon your beauty,
every eyelash becomes a tongue delivering a message.
The dread of your rebuke, like autumn leaves,
turns the color of the sky to jaundiced yellow.
For a dawn or two the sun may surpass you,
if it dares to race its horse against you.
The thought of your steed crossed my mind, and at once my pen turned playful and eloquent.
If it but appears within the heart, it grows softer than a hidden secret.
From the very beginning of time, may none be able to check its rein, so that it gallops on forever.
In the ranks of battle, with all the skills it has, it does whatever crosses its mind.
What can I say of all you do? Whatever you do, you do exactly right.
My master, my prince, my lord: the brand of grief for you adorns me from head to foot.
And today, through love of you, I have become the mirror that reflects my own tomorrow.
So much have I grown in longing for you that both worlds became too narrow to hold me.
Since I came alive through your love, the garment of my soul has grown too tight for my frame.
As I walk your path with joyful display, the rose garden itself becomes a thorn beneath my feet.
The longing of my nights would scorch and shame the turning sky with all its radiance.
Before your face the sun goes dark in the eyes of my seeing gaze.
Like the sea I cast waves upon myself, searching for the one matchless pearl that is mine.
Your knowledge alone, within the breath of time, is the seed for the bird of my knowing heart.
Praising you gives a taste of fulfillment even in the desert, the water for my thirsty, speaking lips.
I am but a drop, yet when I surge in love, the whole sky becomes one wave of my sea.
The hand of fate is bound by your hand-of-God power; the heavens are humbled by your lion-of-God strength.
The sky that moves with the cycle of time goes whirling along his path.
It moved on, and time follows after it, as a flock follows behind its shepherd.
If on the Day of Judgment there is no substance of his love, the gain of both worlds turns to loss.
Once the heart beheld him, it went nowhere else, though the world wanders from world to world.
Lord, let nothing but words of love for you ever pass over my tongue from my heart.
Through your kindness I have all that exists, yet the talk that runs in my heart and soul is of you.
For in remembering your threshold, my heart left me, and now my soul too departs.
In eternity, from the delight of longing for you, my heart slipped from itself, and still it goes.
From yearning for your door my cry rises to the sky, and it goes proudly, gracefully.
With every breath, from my burning heart, one lament follows hard upon another wail.
Have mercy at last, for your captive's heart has lost its endurance, and his strength is slipping away.
How long will you moan with grief, restless one? Enough, Fayyaz, I have burned in longing for you.